


The Song of the Universe

by leradny



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Gen, Space Whales, and lots of references to the old je'daii order, ridiculously detailed headcanons about fictional creatures, space whales!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-14 08:35:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13586334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leradny/pseuds/leradny
Summary: A Traveler meets a boy with a face that falls off. Or, 'The Call' as told from the view of the purrgil.





	1. till human voices wake us, and we drown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Traveler meets a boy with a face that falls off.

I, a Traveler, have followed Great Father Bogan from end to end of the universe.

Our Great Journey is a massive dance, Bogan and all the males of our kind traveling in one direction, while the females cross in the opposite direction. I have only undergone several of these Journeys but Bogan has lived through more of them than any of us--he has memorized every sun, every system. He knows where all pools of sweet air collect, the air which strengthens us for jumping through space. And he can hear the most distant of our people.

I once met Great Mother Ashla, as much like Bogan in wisdom and compassion as she was unlike him in everything else. When our kind is reunited in the center of the universe, we often sing of love and happiness and community, for the two halves of our people coming together. But it is also a time of strife and misunderstanding and violence, for the time we spend apart changes us.

Several Journeys ago Ashla fell so sick she could not jump anymore. The females herded together, pushing her like an ailing calf to the center of the universe. We, males and females alike, gathered together as audience when Ashla sang her final song. She dissolved into a pool of sweet air which we dove into and breathed until it was all within us and we would take Ashla with us on more Great Journeys.

"There will be no Ashla chosen until I too am silent," Bogan sang. "You cannot start a new song before the old one is done."

I do not remember what name he had once. He was Bogan before I was born.

There is another song, the silent song which binds the Galaxy together, which is not only sound but motion and feeling and the very thoughts within our skulls. Ashla was the very strongest singer--that is how we knew she was dying from across the universe. Bogan knows best how to listen. He can understand any creature regardless of what song they sing.

The beasts I sing of now are great hard-shelled ones who have grown to match us in size, sometimes even larger. We know they have mastered jumping through space. We know that the smaller planet-bound creatures have learned to live within their mouths or bellies. They are soft things, usually with a few tentacles on one side and the same amount of tentacles on the other. Their song is strange--only the very oldest like Bogan can hear it and of course he is the only one who understands.

Sometimes these traveling creatures attack us with sharp bursts of light like comets. Sometimes they fly with us through space as friends. Bogan had an old song of small creatures following us, trying to learn how we jumped through space. If he finds a creature drifting about space without aid, he will push them towards the nearest planet. He can tell which one has the best air for them.

If we collide on our jumps through space, we with our pliant tentacles and hardened skulls will survive over the great ones whose shells break open. Their eyes stop shining and the tiny creatures spill out of their bellies. They are frail, they often die, but we try to rescue them anyway. We keep trying until we feel their souls swim forever invisible and unheard.

The pools of sweet air are precious to creatures beside us. Of course a fight would be unavoidable if there was not enough. But these beasts I sing of now are greedy. They have but one Great Beast among them and it is planet-bound. Vicious rounded juveniles swarm around it, fighting us off with their comet bursts. There are no other pools nearby, else we would simply leave them to it. But we must breathe of the air, our hides are dulled and it is at least a few hours' jump to the next pool.

So we descend from space and take the hurts as they come, flying slowly through the asteroid field. In it is a hardened beast. Its eyes are dull and only the faintest gleam of life comes from the few small ones within it. It does not fight as we approach, nor does it respond when we fly past it, bumping it roughly. At first it wakes from its slumber and aggressive lights begin to glow, but then it sluggishly drifts with us. I am glad. I am past calfhood by now, but I am not a warrior.

Unfortunately I must join the fight soon. The creatures guarding the pool of sweet air are very aggressive. They have fought us for years and the song around them is a muddled soup of dull irritation.

Four small creatures jump out of the peaceful Great Beast. The second smallest of them is a sharp, clear note in The Song. I cannot help but drift closer. It--no, he, the tiny creature is male. Words come to me which I have never heard before--he is a youngling, a human, a Boy. He turns his head and looks at me and he _sees_. Without a hint of malice, the Boy reaches out with a tentacle.

_So big--amazing!--if I could just--_

But the rest of the boy's pod fall to the asteroid and he follows begrudgingly. The middling one uses the smallest to soften her landing.

The biggest one is also the oldest--a Man, and a... je'daii?

I have never heard those singers myself. They were once very common and they all sang the silent song in their own way, but just before I was born there was a great attack and within my mother I heard many je'daii cry out in pain and fear. This war song spread from end to end of the galaxy, terrible and unyielding. Bogan wept for the calves and their sweet tunes who had not deserved to be silenced this way. If Ashla was alive, she would have eaten the one responsible, for before becoming Great Mother she was a warrior.

Despite being near, the song flows strangely about this Man, like he is very far or singing softly. Only a precisely calculated note sounds as he softens his own landing. There are many painful melodies, harsh ones of running and hiding and blocking his ears to the song of the universe. But towards the two young ones there is a father's warmth and strength. When the boy tries to sing the same note and fails, the man catches him and brings him back up just as Bogan catches calves.

Eventually the fight goes bad and the boy falls for the second time, distracted and thrown off by one of the large blasts.

Bogan loves calves of all the different creatures and he would have caught the boy no matter what. But I follow him because I want to listen to the je'daii boy. Except he doesn't sing but choke--he is drowning somehow, but why? The air is thick around here and he was breathing well before.

Something is different about his head. Beside him is the face I saw earlier--more like a shell than I realized. The boy slips down trying to catch his face and Bogan rolls to meet his small eyes with the one large. I fly closer and see the boy has blue space-eyes like ours. A tortured song comes out, too high for our ears, but he looks into the deep depths of our Great Father's soul and then he sings the song of the universe: "Help me."

The other face flashes to mind--yes, he needs it. That face protects him like our hardened skulls protect us against the stars.

"I understand," Great Father sings, and the boy echoes it. "I want to help you. Let us help you."

Bogan flies up, away from the thickest air. I circle down and pick up the boy's other face. He is weak and I sing a song of energy, just enough for him to take his face back. His breathing settles at once when he pulls his face back on. A melody: "You saved my life. Thank you."

We find friends all the time, but a je'daii is so rare now that Bogan flies him to his Great Beast and we all follow, listening.

"Sing your song, je'daii calf," Bogan tells him. "Tell your father to sing louder and we will sing with you."

A great wave of admiration and gratitude flows from the small creatures within their Great Beast. It grows even louder when Bogan sings of the next stop on our Great Journey and we all glow as we acknowledge the melody. We hear the song of the small ones who sought to follow us once upon a time. It is different now, for these small ones have learned to jump themselves and it has been so many of their lifetimes that they forgot where they learned it.

We remember.

We jump.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SPACE WHALES!!!!!!!!! I adore 'The Call' and I will defend it with my life. Worldbuilding is my jam. And I love anything to do with Star Wars history and folklore, especially the Je'daii, so I just threw that in there. And I also love music soooo I threw that in there too.
> 
> If anything was too difficult to understand:
> 
> The "great hard-shelled creatures" are mostly ships. The planet-bound one is actually the refinery building. The rounded juveniles are the Tie fighters.
> 
> Purrgil are all sentient and Force-sensitive to various degrees, with Ashla and Bogan being basically on the level of Grandmaster Yoda. But not having remotely human vocal cords and living in deep space means they still need another Force-Sensitive to communicate. So they don't really know about human (or near-human) culture. But they might have encountered Jedi in the Exploration Corps.
> 
> "The song of the universe" is the purrgil name for the Force.
> 
> Ashla and Bogan are the two moons of Tython, a deep-core world which is extremely in tune with the Force. Ashla is the light one, and Bogan is the dark one. They were referenced by the Bendu and also by Zeb. I could go on and on about linguistic drift.


	2. a comparison

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Malachor, Kanan can hear the purrgils too.

**i. before**

Kanan finds Ezra curled up in the galley on a late night, knees drawn and datapad casting a blue glow on his face. There's a half-eaten ration bar on the table, still in its crinkled wrapper. Ezra rarely reads unless it's necessary, and certainly not for fun. Hera had told him there were gaps in Ezra's literacy due to his life on the street since childhood, but she was helping Ezra catch up. The kid has a habit when he reads--he mouths the words or reads them aloud, which Kanan finds charming, though Ezra's embarrassed about it and stops if he notices someone around, unless it's Hera.

So Kanan stays on the edge of the doorway, listening to Ezra's whisper: "Five feet by... four." He touches a hand to his chest. "Their hearts are almost as big as me."

A flash of unguarded thought--of purrgil swimming through deep space, thoughts of hyperspace shining in their eyes. And emotions, feelings of deep reverence and curiosity. The fact that he felt safe enough to let his thoughts seep out into the Force like this makes Kanan so proud. When they first brought Ezra on as crew, he'd been blocked in many ways, so unwilling to connect that it had hindered his training in the Force.

Now Kanan's reminded of another Padawan--Caleb Dume, a constant stream of chatter following Master Billaba who patiently answered the questions she could.

_Master, why does everyone get so mad about Vaapad if it's just a lightsaber form?_

_Master, why have we stopped calling the sides of the Force Ashla and Bogan?_

_Master, if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, **does** it make a sound?_

His questions are of a different sort now that he's older. He often knows perfectly well what the answer is, but how to ask is the real challenge. He steps into the room and Ezra looks up and waves before looking back down. Now Kanan's got to say something--it isn't often that his apprentice's usually spotty concentration is incredibly sharp and focused. "Hey, kid. What are you reading there?"

"Kanan, did you know--" Ezra flips his datapad around--more for emphasis than for showing Kanan the actual words.The large text is interspersed with various pictures, which is only natural for keeping a teenager's interest. "That purgill can recognize themselves in mirrors?"

"Somebody made a mirror big enough for purgills to look in?" Kanan asks. "What would purgill even do with mirrors? They need to look pretty for their mates?"

Ezra snorts. "Regular animals don't recognize themselves in mirrors. Most other sentients do. It's a test of how smart something is."

"Well, fancy learning that at my age." Kanan sits down next to him and leans over to read, bumping Ezra's shoulder. "What else is there?"

"Uhhh..." Undeterred by the touch, Ezra glances at his datapad and scrolls down, then settles on a really juicy tidbit of knowledge. "Some people say they keep growing as long as they live, and nobody knows how long they live or if they even stop growing, ever. Males always travel in one direction with the oldest and biggest one being the leader. Females always travel in the other direction with their own leader. When they meet in the middle around the Deep Core planets, that's their mating season and area. There's this one planet called Tython that sees a whole lot more of them than anywhere else and--ugh, and no one knows why." Ezra scrolls down further. "Why does this article _say_ that so many times? 'No one knows why blah blah blah...'"

**\- - -**

**ii. after**

It's a quiet day. The only mission they had was a milk run. Now that it's complete, they're going the long way back to Yavin 4. After one of their other cells had been found and destroyed, Hera insisted that they avoid using the same routes too many times so they won't attract attention from the Empire. While Kanan can see the sense and he'd agreed with her over the objections of Zeb and Ezra, even he feels cabin fever when they have to take the route with four hyperspace jumps instead of two. Such as today.

He was prepared for the boredom and brought some ingredients for real food. Dinner is a thick, spicy lentil soup bubbling on the stovetop while flatbread cools down on the counter. It's a Chalactan dish he vaguely remembers from his Master's favorite restaurant, not too difficult for someone without sight except the flatbread, which Sabine helped with. It's already taken up a good half of their travel time.

"All right, let me try it," Hera says. She takes his wrist, then the spoon, and passes it to Sabine. "It's a little hot for me, but the bread will probably take care of that. Sabine?"

"As an artist, I have to say that this looks exactly like mud." A pause while Sabine tries it. "Oooh, but it's spicy delicious mud! I like it. Kanan, your taste buds are probably super-strong now that you're a blind Jedi, so don't try too much yet."

"The Force doesn't work that way, Sabine," Kanan says, grinning.

Hera hands him the spoon and he scrapes it along the side before popping it in his mouth. It's got enough of a kick to complement a slight sweetness. As a Padawan, he remembers the dish had nearly burned his tongue to a crisp. Master Billaba had assured him with her usual humor that it was _not_ the point of the excursion, although certain colleagues of theirs may appreciate the side effects very much indeed. For the first time in a long time, he smiles at the memory rather than feeling pain at her loss.

They call everyone else for dinner and the third jump passes with favorable reviews of Kanan's cooking, at least based on taste. Once they're out of hyperspace and the dishes are all done, they retreat to their cabins to while away the last few hours of the journey. After a while, Kanan notices a melody reverberating through the ship, ranging from pulsing echoes to long, extended cries that slide from the top of a scale nearly to the bottom. Tracing his fingers along the wall of the ship, he follows the music to Ezra and Zeb's room and knocks on the door.

"Hello? Ezra?"

The door slides open. "Hi Kanan. What's up?"

"What's that music?"

"Oh--sorry." Ezra moves for his bunk. It creaks as he grasps the edge and pulls something off it. "I didn't realize you could hear it... but duh, blind--"

"Wait!" Kanan holds a hand out as the sound diminishes. "You can keep it on, I just wanted to know what it was."

"You didn't know? It's purrgil calls."

"I thought they were out of range of human hearing," Kanan says. Shortly after their encounter with the purrgils, Ezra had been so enthusiastic about learning everything he could about the creatures that he told random facts to all of the Ghost crew and sometimes others in the rebellion. He misses that bright, cheerful kid from before.

"I was trying to get my comm-link working and started hearing their call again. I guess we're close enough to a pod and the frequency is right. I've been..." He trails off. "Never mind."

"What?"

"I've been trying to understand what it means. I could do it before. But I've been listening to this for fifteen minutes and it's still just sound."

Kanan shrugs. "Whether you could do something before isn't always a guarantee. We have our off-days. Not to mention you were riding on a purrgil's back last time you connected with one, and now you're listening to a radio transmission instead. It's probably just harder."

"Oh. Can you..."

A pause. Before Ezra can backtrack again, Kanan asks, "Can I what?"

"Can you help me?"

A flash of images with the request, as if Ezra's shielding slipped--the first time they'd tried connection on Ezra's birthday when Ezra couldn't do it. The Sith holocron opening in his hands. The krykna who Ezra tried and failed to connect with at all, though Kanan could.

Ezra is afraid, he realizes. Bonding with the purrgil had been a deep, nearly instantaneous connection, but he'd struggled so hard to master the skill in the beginning that he fears all of his progress can be lost with one slip to the dark side.

Kanan would like to say that's not how the Force works, or skillsets in general. The Inquisitor certainly had not lost his skill with a lightsaber after falling to the Dark side. And the only reason Ezra had been struggling was because of his stress and mental blocks. But clearly that will only make things worse. Kanan puts a hand out and walks five steps before his shins bump Zeb's bunk. He feels for the bottom rung of the ladder with the top of his foot and climbs to Ezra's bunk, sitting with his back against the wall and his legs crossed instead of dangling off. Putting a hand on Ezra's shoulder reminds him of how long it's been since he's actually done this, because his Padawan is distinctly taller than he remembers.

He squeezes lightly and tension seeps out of Ezra's shoulder, also broader than he remembers. The comm-link shifts as Ezra turns up the volume.

"We'll get this eventually," Kanan tells him. "Be patient."

He can hear a wry smile in Ezra's voice. "Yes, Master."

He relaxes against the wall into meditative breathing that Ezra follows. Their breathing synchs up. The distant wails crackle with distortion from the commlink. Then, like fine-tuning a signal, the calls become sharper and clearer until they're overlaid with thoughts that are not Kanan's or Ezra's. A sensation of flying through the deep cold of space. Many large bodies stream on each side of him. He realizes abruptly that he can see--in the way purgills see, which is not unlike the light of the holocrons. There is no color besides their blue-glowing eyes and their markings, also blue instead of yellow. And they flicker in time with the calls.

"Sisters," Kanan says. "They're all females." He remembers how Ezra said that the genders traveled separately and met in the center of the universe.

"A planet... Hey! I've never been there before! They're the ones who recognize that planet!"

"There. All you needed was a little grease on the gears."

They sit there listening to the calls for a long time. Every now and then Ezra triumphantly exclaims a word, and Kanan contributes what he can until the focus and monotony gets to be too much even for him. There's something to be said for enthusiasm. He settles back while Ezra mentally complains about the difficulty of translating the language of a creature with completely inhuman vocal cords to Basic. Then Ezra wonders, _Am I actually translating directly or just sensing emotions? And does 'recognition' count as an emotion or not?_

That is a question Caleb Dume would have been proud of, and probably stuck on for weeks. Kanan smiles as he drifts off for a bit, then wakes up to the background noise of purrgil calls with a light knock. Definitely not Zeb, not likely to be Sabine. It's higher than Chopper can reach. So, it's Hera. The ship hasn't gone out of hyperspace yet--he learned there was a different vibration in the hull compared to normal flight. And Ezra's slumped over on his shoulder. The door opens and a very considerate footfall sounds.

"Kanan?" Hera asks, low enough to avoid waking the teenager in the room. Kanan himself sleeps light.

"What?"

"What are you doing up there?"

"Meditation exercise," he says lightly, not bothered if she buys it or not. She doesn't, but not for the reason he thinks.

"Listening to a broken commlink is an exercise?"

Kanan tilts his head and leans closer to Ezra's commlink. The hums, wails, and echoes still emanate from it. "Actually we were listening to purrgils. Don't you hear them?"

"All I hear is static."

He listens to the calls. A word drifts to mind, 'jump.' One by one the purrgils enter hyperspace. When the last one is gone, the calls are cut off by loud static.

"Never mind," Kanan says. Shifting Ezra onto his side is a careful process since Kanan is blind and doesn't want to wake him, but he manages and pockets the commlink for repairs. Then he feels for the top rung of the ladder and carefully, quietly steps off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter I've made a brief nod to prepare4trouble's collection of random short fics and prompts, specifically chapter 25 "Literacy" where it's revealed that Ezra can't read.


End file.
